stretch out

Leave the familiar for a while.

Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season

Onto the meadows and shores and hills.

Open up to the Roof.

Make a new water-mark on your excitement

And love.

Like a blooming night flower,

Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness

And giving

Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.

All the hemispheres in existence

Lie beside an equator

In your heart.

Greet Yourself

In your thousand other forms

As you mount the hidden tide and travel

Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven

Are sitting around a fire

Chatting

While stitching themselves together

Into the Great Circle inside of

You. 

~ Hafiz

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quenching darkness

God

pours light

into every cup,

quenching darkness.

The proudly pious

stuff their cups with parchment

and critique the taste of ink

while God pours light

and the trees lift their limbs

without worry of redemption,

every blossom a chalice.

Hafiz, seduce those withered souls

with words that wet their parched lips

as light

pours like rain

into every empty cup

set adrift on the Infinite Ocean.

~ Hafiz
with thanks to http://www.parabola.org/

The solitary is one who is aware of solitude in himself as a basic and inevitable human reality, not just as something which affects him as an isolated individual. Hence his solitude is the foundation of a deep, pure and gentle sympathy with all other men, whether or not they are capable of realizing the tragedy of their plight. More - it is the doorway by which he enters into the mystery of God, and brings others into that mystery by the power of his love and his humility.

- Thomas Merton

  from Disputed Questions

Notes for a Philosophy of Solitude

with thanks to http://fatherlouie.blogspot.com/




photo by Thomas Merton

What the solitary renounces is not his union with other men, but rather the deceptive fictions and inadequate symbols which tend to take the place of genuine social unity - to produce a facade of apparent unity without really uniting men on a deep level.  We are all alike in our aloneness at the deepest level, yet most of us try to distract ourselves from awareness of this in the ways Pascal called "divertissement," the "occupations and recreations so mercifully provided by society, which enable a man to avoid his own company for twenty-four hours a day."

~ John Barbour

from The Value of Solitude

here quoting Thomas Merton

A human being is part of the whole, called by us “universe,” 

a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, 

as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. 

This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires 

and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. 

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison 

by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures 

and the whole of nature in its beauty.

~ Albert Einstein

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awake awhile

Awake awhile.

It does not have to be

Forever,

Right now.

One step upon the Sky's soft skirt

Would be enough.

Hafiz,

Awake awhile.

Just one True moment of Love

Will last for days.

Rest all your elaborate plans and tactics

For Knowing Him,

For they are all just frozen spring buds

Far,

So far from Summer's Divine Gold.

Awake, my dear.

Be kind to your sleeping heart.

Take it out into the vast fields of Light

And let it breathe.

Say,

"Love,

Give me back my wings.

Lift me,

Lift me nearer."

Say to the sun and moon,

Say to our dear Friend,

"I will take You up now, Beloved,

On that wonderful Dance You promised."

~ Hafiz

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each curve

There are so many positions of love:

each curve on a

branch,

the thousand ways your eyes can hold us,

the infinite shapes each mind

can draw,

the spring orchestra of scents and sounds wafting through the air,

the currents of light combusting like

passionate

lips,

the revolution of the universe’s skirt, whose folds

contain other worlds,

our every sigh that falls against

His inconceivably close,

omnipresent,

divine

body

~Hafiz

from Love Poems From God: 

Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West 
by Daniel Ladinsky

.

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I do not want to step so quickly

.

.

I

Do not

Want to step so quickly

Over a beautiful line on God's palm

As I move through the earth's

Marketplace

Today.

I do not want to touch any object in this world

Without my eyes testifying to the truth

That everything is

My Beloved.

Something has happened

To my understanding of existence

That now makes my heart always full of wonder

And kindness.

I do not

Want to step so quickly

Over this sacred place on God's body

That is right beneath your

Own foot

As I

Dance with

Precious life

Today.

.

~ Hafiz

from The Gift

translation by Daniel Ladinsky

thanks to Poetry Chaikhana

photo by albert watson

.

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I follow barefoot

.

.

I long for You so much

I follow barefoot Your frozen tracks

.

That are high in the mountains

That I know are years old.

.

I long for You so much 

I have even begun to travel

Where I have never been before.

.

Hafiz, there is no one in this world

Who is not looking for God.

.

Everyone is trudging along

With as much dignity, courage

And style

.

As they possibly 

Can.

.

~ Hafiz

from The Subject Tonight is Love

translations by Daniel Ladinsky

.

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That sounds wonderful

.

.

Good poetry

Makes a beautiful naked woman

Materialize from

Words,

.

Who then says,

With a sword precariously waving

In her hands,

.

"If you look at my loins

I will cut off your head,

.

And reach down and grab your spirit

By its private parts,

.

And carry you off to heaven

Squealing in joy."

.

Hafiz says,

"That sounds wonderful, just

Wonderful.

.

Someone please - start writing

Some great

Lines."

.

- Hafiz

from: The subject tonight is love - versions by Daniel Ladinsky

.

Share:

I Follow Barefoot

.

.

I long for You so much

I follow barefoot Your frozen tracks

.

That are high in the mountains

That I know are years old.

.

I long for You so much

I have even begun to travel

Where I have never been before.

.

Hafiz, there is no one in this world

Who is not looking for God.

.

Everyone is trudging along

With as much dignity, courage

And style

.

As they possibly

Can.

.

~ Hafiz

(The Subject Tonight Is Love, version by Daniel Ladinsky)

..

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The sky-wheel turns us into dawn

.

.

The sky-wheel turns us into dawn

and fills creation again with color.

.

Let it be our weakness, this thirst-love

for the world, the sun coming up

like red-gold being poured!

.

The potter's wheel moves,

and shapes change quickly.

.

Let the jar I am becoming

turn into a wine cup.

Fill me with your love

for being awake.

.

I'm no hypocrite renunciate.

Call me this delicious substance

you taste when you create new beauty.

.

Be strong, Hafiz!

Work here inside time,

where we fail, catch hold

again, and climb.

.

~ Hafiz

.

(The Hand of Poetry, Inayat Khan and Coleman Barks)

.

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BECOMING HUMAN

.

Once a man came to me and spoke for hours about

“His great visions of God” he felt he was having.

.

He asked me for confirmation, saying,

“Are these wondrous dreams true?”

.

I replied, “How many goats do you have?”

.

He looked surprised and said,

“I am speaking of sublime visions

And you ask 

About goats!”

.

And I spoke again saying,

“Yes, brother – how many do you have?”

.

“Well, Hafiz, I have sixty-two.”

.

“And how many wives?”

Again he looked surprised, then said,

“Four.”

.

“How many rose bushes in your garden,

How many children,

Are your parents still alive,

Do you feed the birds in winter?”

.

And to all he answered.

.

Then I said,

“You asked me if I thought your visions were true,

I would say that they were if they make you become

More human,

.

More kind to every creature and plant

That you know."

.

~ Hafiz

(“The Gift” – translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

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act great

What is the key

To untie the knot of your mind’s suffering?

What

Is the esoteric secret

To slay the crazed one whom each of us

Did wed

And who can ruin

Our heart’s and eye’s exquisite tender

Landscape?

Hafiz has found

Two emerald words that

Restored

Me

That I now cling to as I would sacred

Tresses of my Beloved’s 

Hair:

Act great.

My dear, always act great.

What is the key

To untie the knot of the mind’s suffering?

Benevolent thought, sound

And movement.

~ Hafiz

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"Love me."

.

.

Admit something:

.

Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me."

.

Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise

someone would call the cops.

.

Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.

.

Why not become the one who lives with a

full moon in each eye that is 

always saying,

.

With that sweet moon language,

what every other eye in 

this world is

dying to 

hear?

.

~  Hafiz

. 

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